[Hiring] Creative Strategy Lead @Apexgrowth

We provide strategic consulting for technology companies poised for hyper-growth. We specialize in paid media, conversion rate optimization, management consulting, and custom marketing technology implementation.

Scalable growth requires an investment in engineering and data resources. In particular, we help businesses launch major programs with minimal headcount. Companies turn to us, their outsourced growth marketing team, to solve their most pressing issues related to growth.

Our team’s unmatched expertise in growth marketing, engineering, and product is our way of ensuring that our solutions outpace our clients’ internal abilities and provide exceptional value.

Creative Strategy Lead Opening at Apex Growth

• Position Type: Fulltime

• Location: Remote (US-Based)

• Salary Range (Total Comp): $100-135K + Bonus

We are hiring a Creative Strategy Lead to join our Creative team at Apex. You will report directly to our VP of Creative Strategy. The ideal candidate is a highly analytical individual who uses data insights to educate clients on launching more effective creative. 

At Apex, we help our clients design more effective creative and testing approaches. The problems we tackle can vary on any given engagement, including:

• Writing creative briefs (supported by data) for a company expanding into New York for their healthcare brand. 

• Developing creative message on Tik-Tok that will resonate with a health-conscious consumer.

• How to leverage Generative AI to lower creative development costs and timelines.

• Auditing a client’s global messaging across their online channels, their competitor’s messaging, and how to improve messaging consistency. 

The candidate should take a framework-driven approach to solving these varied problems. They must also be able to size the level of work, partner with the Vice President of Creative Strategy to price the project appropriately, and track the profitability of their projects. 

We work across a range of channels including online (Facebook, YouTube, Search, Affiliate), offline (Direct Mail), and owned (Email, Push, SMS). 

This is not primarily a strategy-only, client-facing role, or pure creative role. This is a hands-on role that involves significant time analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, testing new creative ideas, and rapidly adapting your thinking process.

You may not be an expert in any given marketing channel but are adapt at researching marketing platforms, conducting consumer research, and pulling competitive insights to support your decisions.

Apex was founded by David Mausolf (ex-VP of Growth Marketing at Disney) and Dave Riggs (ex-VP of User Acquisition at Mammoth Media) in 2020. Since the beginning, we have profitably bootstrapped the business to over 7-digits in revenue. 

We have had immense success being able to work with a variety of fast-growing brands, including those like Shopify, 23andMe, among others. Our leadership team includes leaders from Disney, Amazon, YouTube, and startups.

Marketing is becoming increasingly difficult for companies due to ongoing changes in platforms, tracking changes, and the sheer amount of data available to leverage. Our partners are increasingly looking for thought partners that can act as an extension of their team while still being able to get their hands dirty.

Our success has been predicated on building long-term partnerships that drive marketing business results but also support clients in other areas that impact performance, including analytics, landing pages, financial planning, planning, and other areas that touch marketing.

• Creative Ideation: Ideate new creative concepts and creative pillars on a bi-weekly basis in collaboration with the client's creative team points of contact. Support new ideas backed by data that can be justified to clients.

• Testing & Measurement Approach: Design effective creative testing measurement approaches (A/B, Multivariate) in collaboration with the client's data analytics partners. Recommend on a monthly basis changes in testing process that can reduce the cost to test new concepts and identify winning/losing concepts faster.

• Brief Creation: Write creative briefs on a weekly basis for new concepts or iterative tests (i.e. - Copy, Background) that will be produced by clients or Apex's production partners.

• Creative Test Management: Manage the creative testing process (launch, trimming, pausing) being conducted for multiple clients on a weekly basis.

• Reporting: Partner with client's data analytics team to identify improvements in creative test reporting formats on a monthly basis.

• Creative Briefing: Meet with client's team on a weekly basis to review new briefs, and collect input on new concept designs, and the status of the creative roadmap.

• Creative Roadmap: Meet with client's team on a weekly basis to review initial creative test learnings, roadmap, and performance from prior tests.

• Creative Strategy: Meet with client's team on a monthly basis to review tested creative concepts, identify major learnings, and recommend changes to the quarterly roadmap.

• Billing: Provide clients with a weekly and monthly recap of billing based on the support provided. Use existing pricing contractual agreements to share pricing with clients.

• Budgeting: Estimate and track hours and budget required to produce new creative concepts and iterations. Breakout estimates by stage of the lifecycle (Ideation, Feedback, Production, Testing, Analysis) and team member. Identify opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce costs while maintaining creative output quality.

• Platform Research: Research new and emerging creative formats (ie - Reels) by channel (e.g. - Google, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Email, SMS, Push). Identify best practices by industry, geography, and use case.

• Consumer & Market Research: Partner with client's consumer insights and/or competitive research teams to collect information on their ideal customer profile (ICP). Proactively identify gaps in current creative approaches used by clients across the buying funnel (Advertisement, Landing Page, CRM).

• Relationship Management: Assist the VP of Creative Strategy in proactively developing solutions to resolve outstanding issues with clients. This can include but is not limited to, misalignment in the partnership's resources, goals, or direction.

• Framework Development: Assist the VP of Creative Strategy in developing learning frameworks to teach junior creative strategy team members. Devote consistent time to educating junior team members on a weekly basis including refining their thinking process.

• Maggie Valiunas (VP of Creative Strategy) - Maggie not only leads our creative strategy but also on our client communication. You’ll report directly to her and work closely to develop a data-driven creative roadmap for our clients.

• David Mausolf (Co-Founder) - You’ll spend a significant amount of time working with David, to review your analysis, narratives, and experimentation approaches.

• Cross-Functional Leads - On an ongoing basis, you’ll work closely with our Head of Operations, Elissa Larabee, Senior Director of Growth, Jennifer Wang, and marketing team members.

We at Apex Growth believe in providing clear pathways for career progression, ensuring that every team member has opportunities to grow and evolve in their career. For the Creative Strategy Lead role, we expect a commitment of at least two years, after which there are several potential paths for advancement and growth:

• User Experience and Creative Strategy Role: Ads are just one of the many touchpoints in the customer’s journey. In an expanded role you will be asked to lead user experience design and analytics efforts for our clients' conversion efforts.

• Creative Strategy Director: Move into a more strategic role leading the entire creative process from ideation, analytics, production, and testing including client-facing and internal-facing aspects.

• Join Our Clients: As an integrated thought partner with our clients, we’ll advocate on your behalf if you’d like to join a current or past client. With a pre-existing working relationship, you’ll have access to top analytics roles through our network.

• Expanded Creative Strategy Role: You’ll continue to build out your team of analysts as our creative strategy service continues to grow with our business.

• 5+ years of experience in consumer insights, data analysis, marketing analytics, or a quantitatively heavy marketing role.

• Strong ability to present to senior-level decision makers (Vice President and above) and condense insights into “bite-sized” recommendations. 

• Proficiency in brainstorming new testing ideas grounded in data insights. 

• Ability to partner with client’s creative team and production partners to effectively communicate brand values, identity, and voice. 

• Ability to explain the rationale why creative decisions are being made and why it may or may not have performed to expectations. 

• Ability to lead and mentor more junior team members, providing guidance on how to use data insights to enhance their thinking process.

• Experience in creative for one or more marketing channel including: YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Email, Landing Pages, Onboarding, SMS/Push, Search. 

• Excel (Intermediate to Advanced): We don’t expect you to, but if you need to you can 

• Demonstrated experience running controlled experiments (A/B Testing, Multivariate Testing) including statistical concepts (hypothesis testing, segmentation, randomization, bias/validity).

• Can effectively explain the differences between attribution versus incrementality. Further, you should be able to explain each use case to a client and how it applies to testing. 

• You love to stay up to date on creative industry trends (new ad formats, platforms), marketing trends,  and client’s customers (new product launches, competitors).

• SQL Experience (Intermediate and above)

• Skill in designing and conducting qualitative and quantitative research to understand consumer preferences, behaviors, and motivations.

• Experience using surveys, focus groups, ethnographic studies, and social listening methods to gather insights.

• Ability to extract meaningful consumer insights and translate them into creative concepts that resonate with target audiences.

What Apex Growth offers:

• A great flexible remote work environment—equal parts laid-back startup and motivated meritocracy

• Daily opportunities to grow your technical skills and capabilities & professional development opportunities within the organization

• A highly accomplished executive team with a plan to scale Apex Growth, that works with you to become a major player in the growth marketing agency space

• A competitive salary and bonus structure

• 401(k) with company matching

• Generous (and by generous we mean unlimited) PTO

• Paid Vacation, Paid Bereavement, and Paid Family Leave

• Full Health Benefits (Dental, Vision, Wellness)

• Learning and career development program

These benefits are applicable to Apex Growth, US based, full-time employees only. 1099/Contract Providers are ineligible for these benefits.

Still wondering why you should consider joining the Apex Growth team? Hear from Apex Growth Co-founders David Mausolf and Dave Riggs talk about what sets us apart.

Why join the team at Apex Growth?